Karen Kilgariff
Karen Kilgariff is an actor, born 1970.
For most of two decades Kilgariff was the person writing the jokes rather than the person saying them. She came up as a stand-up in the early 1990s, joined the cast of Mr. Show with Bob and David, and then took the steadier road: head writer on The Rosie Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Pete Holmes Show. That is a career most comedians would take and almost nobody outside the industry would notice.
The on-camera credits from those years are small and frequently odd. A voice on the far end of a telephone in Punch-Drunk Love. A sales clerk on Jenny. A version of herself in The Anniversary Party. Later, Tabitha on the cartoon Craig of the Creek. It reads like the filmography of somebody who was busy elsewhere.
Elsewhere turned out to be a microphone. Since 2016 she has co-hosted the true-crime comedy podcast My Favorite Murder, and the book that came out of it, Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered, arrived in 2019. It works for the same reason the writing worked: she has an unusually exact ear for the moment a grim story tips into the absurd, and she does not flinch at either half of that. I'll Be Gone in the Dark uses her on screen in that register, as a host rather than as a comedian.
Movies (2)
TV (4)
Books (1)
Where to start with Karen Kilgariff
The screen credits are a side business, so route through them accordingly. Mr. Show with Bob and David is the one with real comedy history attached, sketch television at its most formally reckless, and she is in the company that made it.
If you have arrived from the podcast, I'll Be Gone in the Dark is the natural next step, a documentary series on the same obsession, with her appearing as a voice from that world rather than as a comic. Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered is the book version of her, half memoir and half advice, and much funnier on the page than the premise sounds. For the acting, Punch-Drunk Love is a two-minute voice part in a great film, The Anniversary Party a genuine ensemble curio, and Craig of the Creek the kids' cartoon where she is quietly excellent.